No excuse for bridge bombers' terrorist aims

The five men who plotted to blow up the Ohio 82 bridge over the Cuyahoga Valley National Park in April 2012 wanted to be seen as modern anarchists - libertarian intellectuals protesting corporate America and its most wealthy beneficiaries.

They won't get to wear that mantle. They are more likely to be remembered as common terrorists - homegrown fanatics whose clumsy plot, had it not been foiled by the FBI, would have killed innocent people and could have destroyed the loosely organized Occupy Movement the five had tried to penetrate.

The five were hardly competent zealots. Their plot - to use just 10 pounds of high explosives to try to destroy a large, five-span bridge - showed how little they knew about what they were trying to do.

That an FBI informant won their confidence - and that the FBI supplied fake explosives and equally phony cellphone ignition hardware - may be of concern to some civil libertarians. It shouldn't be.

The FBI and its informant did not conceive this potential act of violence. They only gave the five what they thought were the tools to carry it out, without regard to the Occupy Movement, which, for the record, the five had little use for, as the U.S. Attorney's office showed in the case.

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No excuse for bridge bombers' terrorist aims

The five men who plotted to blow up the Ohio 82 bridge over the Cuyahoga Valley National Park in April 2012 wanted to be seen as modern anarchists ? libertarian intellectuals protesting corporate